I cannot be more exposed than I am right now. As I sit here, and Rhodes lifts my one good breast and works her fingers from the nipple to the outside, I sing my song in my mind, just like I have the dozens of times I’ve had this done in the last decade. I hum the song, and think about being strong and embracing who I am. About not letting whatI thinkothers think of me bring me down.
And usually I don’t, but then I met a man that I kind of want to impress.
Rhodes’ hands move along my breast, and when she’s done with the left, she moves to the right and moves gently over my scar. It healed long ago, but sometimes when the universe likes to mess with me, it hurts to touch, usually when the weather is particularly unkind, or if my bra isn’t sitting right.
There are a million bras on the market now that there never used to be. Bras where one side – or both, for the women who’ve had a double mastectomy – is filled with padding to make it look like one’s chest is perfectly… well… normal.
The bras were exciting to me, once I discovered them and was healed enough to try them out. I’ve experimented over the years, and bought bras bigger than my natural B-cup, but despite it feeling like a brilliant plan at first, it all falls down around me once I put the thing on and become lopsided.
I wore my larger bra one time. That’s all the time it took to realize I’d rather have two Bs instead of one D and one pathetic excuse for a bra-filler.
Getting sick and losing the very thing most women considerthething that makes them a woman was hard for me. I was thankful to be alive, but I was insecure about what I’d lost.
Troy was sent away for work during my bra-experimenting stage, which is why he knows the warrior in me, the girl who fought cancer and kicked its butt. Mitch considers me small and whiney, because he was the one who picked me up when I couldn’t get the stupid lopsided bra to sit right. When I was trying to be someone I truly wasn’t.
“Okay, that all feels fine.” Doctor Rhodes waits for me to refocus before she smiles. “No pain at all?”
I shake my head, which makes her smile grow. “Please lie down, and we’ll get the ultrasound done just to make double sure.” She leaves me to lie back, as she drags out a large machine and takes out the wand… the probe, the whatever-they-call-those-things.
She takes a bottle of translucent gel and squeezes it onto my left breast once I lay down, then she turns back to her machine and presses whatever buttons she needs to press to bring the image up on her screen.
“Not cold?”
“Nuh-uh.” I shake my head and get my hand and arm comfortable at the top end of the bed. “Kinda used to this now.”
“You’re a trooper, hon.”
She moves her probe in much the same way she did her hands a few minutes ago. Along the sides. Beneath the bottom curve. Around to the middle of my chest. And then fanning out from my nipple. She hits buttons and takes pictures that she’ll compare to last year’s scans once I go home. She’ll look when I’m not around, just in case it’s bad news, and she needs time to compose herself.
But she takes her images with a smile, and when she notices I’m ready to vibrate off the bed, she shakes her head. “I see nothing scary, sweetpea.”
“See any babies in there?”
She snickers and continues to work. “I don’t want to make you feel like a number to me, Abby. But I swear, every single person that comes through this room makes that joke.”
“Even the men?”
Laughing, she nods and focuses on her screen as she takes measurements. “Especially the men. They must think they’re the first person to ever tell it.”
“Your job sounds boring,” I grumble.
It’s all I’ve got in defense for when she wipes my breast clean, then squeezes more gel onto the right. There’s no nipple to work around this time. Nothing but a thick scar with deep ridges and a gruesome arch, as though a smile in a horror film.
I try to be brave and strong when I talk to girls like Marcie. I don’t ever want her to hate her body. But that doesn’t stop me from covering up quickly after each shower. It doesn’t stop me from wishing they’d taken a kidney instead… or, you know, nothing at all.
But my life wouldn’t be that easy, and maybe this was my journey for a reason. Maybe I was sent through the fire and brought out the other side, burned up and scarred, so I could talk to girls following in my footsteps, and assure them it would all be okay.
In payment for that honor, I get crippling doubt, and the inability to take all of my clothes off in front of the first man I’ve ever been tempted to do it for.
“Alright.” When she’s done, Doctor Rhodes gives me a wad of paper towel, and allows me to clean the gel off myself while she pushes her machine and chair back across the room.
She washes her hands, hums a tune, hits some buttons, then stops in front of me and accepts the dirty paper before passing me my top.
“Is your brother waiting for you?”
I shake my head and work into my bra. The gel is impossible to get off without a long shower and time to let the hot water wash it away, so my bra slides on the residue. It annoys me, but I get the white-with-pink-polka-dots material on, and slip my shirt over my head.
“I came alone today. Everyone’s busy, and this is just a routine checkup.”